How NOT to Organize an Event

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"Do you ever sleep? Like at all?" Since the past ten days, I've been asked this question about 27 times. Could be my eyes being vampire red all day or my emails having a timestamp of usually 3 am. Or just because my face looks stoned all the time. But here's the truth.

I organized two of the biggest events of my life this past week - The Accessible World Conference (4/27 - 4/29) and evoHaX (4/30 - 5/1). Just like every other event organizer, I tend to plan my events way in advance, particularly because I want them to be successful. I don't want them to be okay or acceptable. I want them to be perfect. But of course, everything comes with a price. The price in this case is the events sucking up every single bit of energy left inside of me. It gets to the point where coffee stops being functional, energy drinks replace water, and Tylenol is your daily vitamin. Now I've been sick since Thursday but I only realized the harm I had done to my body on Monday and have just finally started to feel better (today is Wednesday.) Also, I should mention that I lost my credit card during the event and realized only yesterday that I was missing it (two pats on the back.)

But it could've been worse if I didn't have the support and love of the volunteers and so many others who couldn't be there physically. Texts of encouragement, tiny post-its, even tweets and retweets.

THANK YOU for being there.

It brings me tears of joy to see how meaningful and successful the events were but it also brings me extreme levels of discomfort and frustration to be sick to my bones. It's so easy to get caught up in the things that we care about that sometimes we forget about the things that need being taken care of, and we realize it only when it's too late. So, everyone who's been asking how I pulled off two back to back events; I did it at the expense of my health (and credit card). If you really want to know how it is to pull off an event that is hundred times bigger and better, go attend the Philly Tech Week 2016 Signature Event.